The Nature of College. James J. Farrell
College Students Think About Politics
Higher Education and “Sitizenship”
The Individualization of Responsibility
The Institutionalization of Responsibility
Training for an Ecological Revolution
Chapter 11 - Making Environmental History
Making History on Campus: What’s Happening
Making History on Campus: What’s Not Happening
Making Environmental History: What Could Happen
Commons Sense for College Culture
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Also by JAmEs J. FArr Ell
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The Nuclear Devil’s Dictionary
The Spirit of the Sixties
One Nation Under Goods:
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To America’s College Students
Prelude
A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.
Kenneth burke, Permanence and Change
“Ordinary” is just another word for not paying attention.
Frank Gohlke and mark I owry, “Prairie Castles”
We have several thousand thoughts a day, and probably about 95 percent of those thoughts are the same every day.
John Adams, Thinking Tod ay as if Tomorrow Mattered
Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.
Aldo l eopold, A Sand County Almanac
I am sane only when I have risen above my common sense. ...
Wisdom is not common.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal entry: June 22, 1851
College students have a lot on their minds. A few years ago, students of mine mapped the mind of an average college student. I gave them an outline of an empty head and asked them to fill it with the everyday concerns of college life. The results were fascinating: classes, homework, grades, friends and family, sex and relationships, food and snacks, drinking and drugs, jobs and financial issues all interrelated with religious and moral concerns. They try, as one student said, “to figure out what the hell they’re going to do with the rest of their lives.”
As this suggests, students think about a lot at college. But what do they really learn? In the classroom they pick up some math, a little science, and a social study or two. They learn enough American history and political science to be competitive on trivia night, but they also acquire such subtle skills as how to look attentive in class while thinking of sex, relationships, and money. They discover, quickly, the social value of a major, which is why so many incoming students are premed or pre-law. If they aren’t careful, students might get stereotyped by less desirable majors, like the soon-to-be-impoverished poets in English or the dreamers in the art department. By the second semester of their first year they already know which professors give an “easy A” and why they should never take an 8:00 a.m. class again. Masters at multitasking, they procrastinate, text friends, check Facebook, drink coffee, listen to music, and clean—all at once.
At college, students learn to live for the breaks and wait for the weekend. They know which fraternities throw the wildest parties. They master the fine art of drinking beer from a bong or a Frisbee or a boot, along with the more difficult lessons associated with overcoming a hangover. At parties and elsewhere, students learn how to present themselves physically and socially for maximum magnetism. Once they draw someone in, students practice other arts and crafts, like the fine art of hooking up or the subtle craft of condom use. They find the best campus places for privacy and discover the delicate politics of “sexile.”
The academic cycle of cramming for tests and forgetting a great percentage of the material immediately afterward becomes the cycle of their academic life. It’s the grade that’s important, not what they actually learn. Therefore many students refine their talent for bullshit: perfecting the discussion of books they’ve never read, cranking out five hundred words about anything or nothing, writing a response paper ten minutes before class, and pounding out a ten-page expository essay (with footnotes) in a day. “Good students” learn what the professor wants, which buzzwords she likes, and how to give her both in bulk.
Of course, some students learn more substantial stuff in academia. These students learn to love ideas and the art of a well-crafted sentence. They learn to work harder than they ever imagined, and to play harder, too. Some students learn several of life’s important questions, and one or two of the answers. They learn a little more about the self beneath the surface, and what they’re good at and good for.
Most students take a foreign language, but many discover that slang is taken more seriously by their peers. So students learn how to call out a tool, troll, nerd, slush, or sorostitute, and they know synonyms for “liquid courage” and “beer goggles.” A lot of college slang involves natural endowments, natural functions, and the call of nature, but almost none of it enhances students’ love or understanding of the natural world.
Students learn college culture (mostly from other students—certainly not professors) and pass the patterns and practices of everyday life on campus from one graduating class to the next. But as they find a place in campus culture, they also define their place in the world, both socially and ecologically.
College is a place where students could think twice about American culture and ecosystems, but most students still don’t, despite the fact that people are causing climate change—transforming the good Earth into a different planet. We love to joke about global warming. Warming sounds like something familiar, and, especially